- Novelist Was Best Known for 1967 Masterpiece 'One Hundred Years of Solitude'
The Wall Street Journal, Updated April 17, 2014 8:09 p.m. ET
BOGOTÁ, Colombia—The Nobel
Prize-winning author
Gabriel García Márquez
popularized magical realism in Latin American literature by
writing fantastical novels that drew on the folk tales and ghost stories
he had heard as a child on Colombia's poor, sun-baked Caribbean coast.
Mr.
García Márquez, who died in his Mexico City home at age 87 on Thursday
after being hospitalized for infections, was best known for his 1967
masterpiece, "One Hundred Years of Solitude," which recounted the
travails of the abundant and obsessive Buendía clan.
Translated
into dozens of languages and selling 30 million copies, the book is
considered literature's exemplar of magical realism, generating
countless imitations and inspiring a generation of writers in Latin
America and beyond.
Though Mr. García
Márquez didn't invent the technique, he became the leading exponent of
the style, which balances dreamlike, fantastical vignettes with sharply
focused realism, all of it solemnly delivered through an eccentric cast
of whimsical characters.
Readers of his
books have delighted in stories populated with tin-pot dictators, cows
that invade a palace, women that levitate, self-obsessed characters that
don't age and brokenhearted suitors.